


Goddess of Good Fortune

by MonaLisa709



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Depression, Everybody Dies, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt Barely Any Comfort, Hurt Kathryn Janeway, Hurt No Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, Immortality, Immortals, Kathryn Janeway Needs a Hug, Minor Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway, Non-Explicit Sex, Omnipotence, So yeah, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, The One Where Janeway Is Made Into a Q, Unrequited Love, except Janeway, no seriously i can't stress to you how unrequited q/janeway is in this story, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29880690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonaLisa709/pseuds/MonaLisa709
Summary: Kathryn Janeway has lost everything, Q arrives entirely too late, and Lady Q plays a cruel joke.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/Q
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	Goddess of Good Fortune

Voyager had been floating dead in space for days now. Janeway was reading through sensor logs in her ready room when whoever it was had attacked; an explosion rendered the bridge inhospitable, trapping her inside. 

She couldn't reach anyone. The comm system wasn't down, there was simply no one to reach. She remained unshakable for the first day, trying everything she could, but there was nothing she could do without the rest of Voyager. 

The second day, she broke down, sobbing as she slapped her comm badge for what felt like the thousandth time, asking for somebody, anybody to answer. She was furious at herself, at fate, and she began throwing everything that wasn't attached to the deck. She quickly scolded herself for acting like a foolish child, and cried some more. 

The third day, environmental controls began to lose power. She tried asking the computer what was going on, but she was answered with a slow chime before the lights went out. Oxygen levels slowly began to drop, and before long she sat on the floor with her legs curled up under her. Her breaths came heavily and she dozed off after a few hours. 

She woke up on the fourth day to the sound of a familiar voice.

"Kathy…" 

She opened her eyes sluggishly and saw Q standing by her desk, wearing his usual Starfleet attire and an unusually grim expression. She muttered weakly through gritted teeth, "What the hell do you want." 

He met her gaze and said, with something almost like remorse, "I knew you were in a bit of trouble, I thought you'd be able to handle it, but something went… wrong." He stepped towards her and said, "Horribly wrong…" 

She moved to try and stand, grunting softly as her legs buckled underneath her. She was exhausted, but in a flash of light, he was there beside her, helping her to her feet. She grimaced and shoved him away weakly, bracing herself on the edge of the desk and saying, "Then why didn't you do something. Why didn't you… blink the other ship away or send them into the abyss-" her voice rose angrily, "-why didn't you do something Q! My crew is gone! My ship is in ruins! They're all dead! Every single one! Kim, Paris, Tuvok, Wildman, Torres, Chakotay-" 

Her voice broke and she looked away, blinking back angry tears and taking in a raspy breath. The Continuum had forbidden him from aiding Voyager, she knew that; he knew that she knew that, but for once, he could almost understand. 

It was almost a minute of dreadful, pointed silence before she whispered, "Go away."

He hesitated before reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder, but as soon as he touched her, she slapped his hand away, yelling hoarsely, "Go away, Q! Go away! For once in your infuriating existence, go away and leave me be!" 

Her slap didn't physically hurt him- he doubted anything outside Q weapons ever could -but seeing her like this was the closest anything had ever gotten.

For the first few seconds, she tried to regain her composure, tucking various stray locks of hair behind her ears and standing upright while turning away from him. It didn't last long.

It started with her breaths beginning to shudder, and her hand quickly went to brace against her desk. She straightened her back and squared her shoulders, but it was to no avail. Her knees buckled once more and she held a hand over her mouth, sobbing openly and almost folding in on herself.

He knelt beside her and slowly placed a hand on her shoulder, his heart(?) nearly shattering as she flinched at his touch.

"I could take you home. If that would help." He knew it wouldn't. 

Her answer was almost inaudible, but for once in his life(?), he regretted the fact that he could hear her voice flawlessly. "It doesn't matter anymore." 

He moved in front of her. She looked up from the carpet, and he almost hoped she would glare at him (punch him, scream at him, anything to let him know there was some fight left), but her bottom lip quivered and her head fell forward to rest on his shoulder. His arms wrapped around her and he kissed the top of her head, stroking her back and her shoulders as he whispered sweet nothings into her hair. 

He took them away from Voyager, leaving the broken ship to drift aimlessly in space. With a thought, they were in the Continuum, but not in any form she'd seen before. The dirt road was dreadful, and the memories of almost being executed in the Civil War reenactment still made him grimace, so instead he took her to a 20th century suburban home. 

The small house was decorated with all manner of knickknacks and embroidery projects (and some of the most hideous wallpaper he'd ever seen), and there was plastic on the furniture for god's sake, but there was something oddly comforting about it all, so he let it be. 

She was exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and he decided that what she needed the most was sleep. 

In normal circumstances, where she would banter with him and he could charm her all he wanted, he would have changed her clothes by hand, but this was far from normal (he noticed with devastating awareness). He snapped his fingers and she was in a comfortable set of pajamas, underneath the covers of the master bedroom's California King, and it wasn't long before she drifted to sleep.

He stepped to the side of the bed and saw that her face was screwed into a frown. Her hands held the sheets in a white-knuckled grip. He reached into her thoughts and found that she was already slipping into a nightmare, and a nasty one at that. He knew that before all of this, she would have hated him for digging around in her mind, but for the moment he could only hope she would forgive him as he made her sleep dreamlessly. 

He kissed her forehead and tucked a stray lock of hair out of her face, just as a flash of light signaled the arrival of another Q. 

He sighed and turned to face his former lover, saying in a solemn voice he'd never heard himself use before, "Please Q, she's had a wretched day." 

She raised one of her impeccable eyebrows and drawled, "So you've brought your pet human back to the Continuum. What was it this time? Did she have a bad date with Commander Whatsit and wanted to whimper to you, or did another wormhole turn out to be a dud?" 

He narrowed his eyes at her and she narrowed hers right back, as he said, "Buzz off. I don't feel like arguing with you." 

She rolled her eyes and stepped closer, saying as she looked down at the sleeping captain like a snake eyeing a mouse, "If it's really that horrible, just cheer her up. Give her that horrid bean drink she never shuts up about, make her a new ship with new underlings to boss around, there has to be something to stop this nonsense and your insufferable moping." 

He kept his eyes fixed on Kathryn, stroking her cheek with the back of one finger. He remained grim as he said, "None of that will make her happy, not now." 

For the first time, he heard Miss Q laugh. "Then what will? Good heavens, you never moped this much when she rejected you. This 'horrid day' must have been a real doozy." 

The humor quickly died for her and she said, "I almost have the mind to make her Q. Surely now that those ignoramuses are out of the way, she couldn't be too horrible to have around."

He looked up at her quickly and said with a bit of urgency, "Don't you dare. That's a terrible idea." 

She gave him a smirk. "You act like the fact that it's a terrible idea to you is going to stop me. If anything, I'm convinced. Really Q, your sense of humor has degraded horribly ever since you let that mammal into our lives. Besides. It will be so much fun to watch her."

She disappeared. 

He quickly looked back down at Kathryn to find her still asleep underneath the covers, her expression now blank and her hands grasping at the sheets. He sat on the side of the bed and held one of her hands gently, slipping a small sliver of a dream into her mind. 

She was lying in the middle of a wildflower field, gazing up at the stars, but Q stayed by her side, warding her nightmares away.

\---

When Kathryn woke up the next morning(?), sunlight filtered beautifully through the windows and birds sang outside in the trees. She looked around the room with a bit of alarm, but as soon as she saw Q, it all came flooding back. Her face fell and she lied back down, turning away from him as she curled up in the sheets. 

He moved to rest a hand on her back but hesitated at the last second, saying softly, “Kathy… you know there was nothing I could do.” 

She turned over and gave him a weak glare, saying hoarsely, “Well you certainly picked an odd time to give a damn about anyone’s rules.” He nodded and said with a ghost of a sad smirk, “I guess I did.”

He stood from the side of the bed and conjured a small breakfast tray for her, complete with a tall stack of pancakes, bacon and eggs, and of course a steaming mug of coffee. She faced away from him, although her stomach rumbled loud enough for him to hear. 

“You have to eat something, Kathy. Please,” he muttered, moving a little closer. She reluctantly sat up and grabbed the tray, setting it in her lap before wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. He watched her inquisitively, a faint frown on his face as he said, "Go on, it's not poison." The corner of her mouth twitched and she muttered under her breath, "Shame."

She ate her breakfast, keeping her gaze on the tray as she downed mouthful after mouthful. She hadn't realized just how hungry she actually was; she cleaned her plate in five minutes. The coffee, however, remained untouched. 

Q noticed this, saying, "It's your favorite blend, black, just how you like it." She grabbed the handle slowly and took a sip, setting it back down. He let out a small breath before saying, "How are you, Kathy?" 

She rubbed one of her temples with her free hand and said through gritted teeth, "Don't call me that." He frowned and said, "Kathryn, then." Chakotay's face flashed behind her eyes and she spat, "That's worse." 

"Madame Captain?"

She slammed the mug down on her tray, sending coffee sloshing over the sides. "I'm not a damn captain anymore Q, my crew is dead-!" 

Her voice cracked and she held her face in her hands, taking deep shuddering breaths before grabbing the mug again. She took another slow sip of coffee, taking a deep breath. 

“I’m sorry," he said softly. She nodded, finishing off her mug and setting it down on the tray.

“‘Kathy’ is alright. I shouldn’t have yelled.”

“My dear Kathy, no one has more of a right to yell than you do.”

She set her tray to the side, and he vanished it as soon as it left her hands. 

She spent the day in bed, alternating hours of sleeping and crying and only breaking this routine to begrudgingly eat the meals Q conjured for her. Although she hardly said a word, he stayed with her the entire time, keeping her dreams peaceful and making sure she was comfortable. 

\---

Almost a month passed this way; Kathryn could hardly leave her room. She ate her meals and drank her coffee in silence, ignoring Q and staring into nothingness. He fought off her nightmares and talked to her even though he hardly ever got answers outside small grunts and single words.

He never knew her crew meant this much to her. Sure, she’d told him, she’d been so determined to get home, she watched over them like a mother bear, but he woefully realized that he’d never really listened to her. Seeing her like this was truly jarring. 

One day, she’d been in a darker place than usual. She’d thrown her mug at the wall, sending hot coffee and shards of glass everywhere, and screamed for him to leave. He forgot himself for a moment and left the Continuum, knocking a few moons out of orbit before righting them again and heading back. He found her sitting in the living room, and she said in a voice hoarse from sobbing, “I’m sorry Q.” She watched him with watery eyes as he stepped closer, and he said, “It’s alright… I shouldn't have left you alone, you have every right to be angry.” He sat down next to her hesitantly, and before he could react, she moved closer and hugged him. He returned the hug gently, feeling her begin to cry in his arms. 

Miss Q arrived one evening while Kathryn was sleeping, and Q stood in front of her door with a glare. 

“Don’t you dare, Q. You can’t.”

She raised an eyebrow and said, “And why can’t I? I’m bored. I know fully well that you understand the feeling.”

“She’s miserable enough without having to live out eternity this way. Please, leave her be.”

She actually smirked, chuckling low in her throat and saying, “‘Please’? Oh Q, how pathetic of you.” She snapped her fingers, disappearing from the house in a flash of light. 

He teleported to Kathryn's room only to find her sitting on the edge of her bed, looking down at her hands. He could feel something almost like electricity in the air, a subtle difference he only noticed around fellow Q. His heart(?) dropped. 

He knew that right now, she was feeling the full brunt of omnipotence, weighing down on her like a foot on the back of her neck. He stepped forward cautiously, but the force of her anger shoved him back against the closed door as she muttered, "What the hell did you do to me." 

"This wasn't me, I swear! It was Q, that conniving-" 

"Why." 

He couldn't answer her.

Standing in front of her was almost like standing in the center of a supernova. He could feel the intensity of the grief rolling off of her, and it almost brought him to his knees. For her sake, he couldn't wait until a few millennia passed, when emotions began to fade and give way to crushing emptiness, but at the same time he dreaded it. 

As she narrowed her eyes at him and snapped vindictively, sending them both hurtling through space, he had to admit she adjusted quickly. He truthfully expected nothing less from her, and he would have been proud were it not for the fact that he was currently being dragged through space and time like a ragdoll. Given the circumstances, for the first time in forever, he was terrified.

She yelled at him in the Qs' language, and while hearing her voice saying those words(?) was transcendent, the meaning behind them made him want to hide in the nearest blackhole and never come out again. 

"Why did she do this? Why did she make me this way? Answer me, Q!" 

"She said she was bored, nothing more! She didn't mean anything by it!" 

She lashed out, dragging him through an anomaly and raging, "That would be just my luck, to spend the rest of time itself as part of a species who torments sentient life because they're bored!" 

She vanished, leaving him reeling.

It wasn't until fifty years later that he found her standing on top of a trash freighter in the Delta Quadrant, watching Voyager's remains being hauled away. 

She wore her Starfleet uniform, her (lovely) hair pulled back into her signature bun. She felt his presence and said softly, "Go away." He manifested beside her in his own corporeal form, sitting down on the hull. She sat down next to him and blinked back tears (he remembered tears, from his mortal experience on the Enterprise-D). 

"Kathy… this won't help." 

"I know it won't." 

She clasped her hands together and took in a deep breath, saying, "It doesn't get any better, does it?" He looked down at the bulkhead beneath his feet and said, "I wouldn't know. I haven't… cared for anything as strongly as you cared for them."

He thought for a quick second before saying, "If it makes you feel any better, you're Q now. You can see anything you want, do anything you like."

She looked at him and said lowly, "You really don't know anything about me, do you? After all those years of stalking me and trying to win me over, you never really took the time to learn who I am. If you think I'm going to enjoy being trapped in limbo, never able to move on from this miserable existence, then you don't know me at all."

She disappeared, and with that, Voyager's remains ceased to exist. 

He stayed on the bulkhead of the trash freighter for a while longer, staring out at the empty space in front of him. He wasn't sure what was to be done now.

\---

The first thing she did was try to undo what happened to Voyager. She went back and vanished the other ship into nothingness, but as she did, she could feel every individual life cease to exist all at once. It hit her like a punch to the throat.

She watched her crew go on living, but she wasn't used to changing time, and what she changed only caused another timeline. Back in her timeline, her crew was still dead. 

She tried everything she could, but the results remained the same. She supposed she could have ripped the universe apart but in the end she didn't see the point. 

\---

Years, decades, centuries passed and Kathryn grew used to omnipotence. 

She started off the rest of eternity by exploring, still driven by the humanity inside her to see all that she could. She looked but never touched, determined not to become a monster but too dreadfully aimless to remove herself entirely. 

She visited Earth only once, but without her crew the planet held nothing but bitterness. She never visited it again. 

In a somewhat desperate attempt to regain some small bit of normalcy, she lived in different species for a couple millennia. She'd mingle, learn all there was to learn, sometimes staying for hundreds of years at a time before moving to the next. 

The more and more she lived as a Q, the less and less sense the Prime Directive made to her. The notion left her mind entirely one day, as she stopped an asteroid from decimating a planet populated by a civilization that deemed her the Goddess of Good Fortune shortly afterward. She found somewhat of a purpose, gaining a similar reputation in thousands of solar systems, halting plagues and natural disasters and all manner of disputes.

She refused to be associated with the Continuum. She never sought them out, and for the longest time, she didn't see any of them.

Q finally came to talk to her, watching carefully from afar as she drifted on the edge of a spiral galaxy in the incorporeal form she hated so much. She thought she would never get used to the feeling. 

"What do you want, Q?"

"I'd just like to talk."

"...Alright."

She appeared in the tunic she'd worn on the planet she and Chakotay had dubbed New Earth, sitting cross-legged in the void. Q joined her in his usual uniform, looking at her with a silent question on his features. 

"I'm sorry, Kathy, you must know that by now." 

She paused before saying softly, "I know."

She rested her chin on her hand and said, "I've given it quite a bit of thought, between the distractions. Time… is so incredibly different this way. I guess it doesn't matter now." 

She faced him and said, "The emptiness is… almost suffocating sometimes. I've lived a thousand different lives, on so many different worlds, but it doesn't mean a thing. Not a damn thing. I can pretend, but I'm not like them anymore." 

Her voice quivered as she said, "I can barely even mourn properly. I feel… I feel numb, but that's not the right word. I know it was senseless, I know there was nothing I could have done, but I can't accept that. But I have to." 

He hesitated, for once in his life(?) thinking before he spoke. 

"You may not believe me, and I've given you plenty of reason not to, but I admire you." 

She looked back out into the void, chuckling darkly. He raised both hands and said, "I do. Any other-" 

He caught himself, "A Q would have lashed out. Half the universe would be in ruins, but you, Kathryn Janeway, the marvel of the human race… I used to scoff at your morals, but…" He looked down at his hands and then back at her, saying softly, "You're so much better than I could ever be." 

They sat there in silence, watching everything and nothing all at once. She caught herself speaking aloud, startling them both, "Hold me." He gave her a puzzled look and she said, "Please." 

Without hesitation, he pulled her into a tight hug, feeling her return it. He planted a small kiss under her ear and she rested her forehead on his shoulder, holding onto him a little tighter. He could feel her emotions filling the space around them, her frustration, anger, but the most overwhelming was the crushing grief. It poured off of her in relentless waves that had long since dragged her under.

He held her, stroking her hair and staying silent as she began to cry. He didn’t need to infer too much to know that he shouldn’t say anything, and even if he should, he wouldn't know what. He supposed if she were in a better mood, she would have found that amusing, Q, not knowing what to say, but he doubted she would be in a better mood again.

Slowly, over the course of a few hours, the waves subsided to numbness, and she disappeared without another word. He stayed behind, looking out at the galaxy gently turning before him. She had called this the Milky Way before, and he almost had the mind to destroy it. 

He plucked it out of space and held it in his palm, regarding it with something almost resembling disgust. A simple thought, that's all it would take, but something stopped him. He paused, letting it turn in his hand before leaving it hanging in the void. 

\---

Another thousand years came and went like it was nothing, and Q didn’t see Kathryn once. He saw her handiwork: corrected orbits, cured plagues, halted disasters of every caliber, but never the orchestrator. That was, until one day she found him instead of the other way around. 

He had gone back to Earth and found nothing he remembered. Humans had changed drastically since the last time he'd seen them, and when he arrived, they simply ignored him. He knew it was foolish, but he almost felt hurt. He was sitting inside a nebula, vanishing stars without systems when she found him. 

She didn't say a word, sitting down next to him and hugging her knees to her chest. He couldn't feel her emotions at first, and as he probed for them, he found nothing but a small fragment of her grief. 

He turned to face her and said, "I can see why you hate this so much…" He paused before saying softly, "Kathr- Kathy, I am so sorry-"

She interrupted him with a swift kiss on the mouth, and as he looked at her in utter bewilderment, she said, "Enough apologies, Q." She leaned in again, and there was nothing he could do to move away. 

This kiss was slow. It was everything he'd ever wanted, but at the same time it wasn't. Her arms hooked around his neck and her hands wandered to his hair, but she was so dreadfully cold. Where he should have felt passion, warmth, love, if not love then lust, anything, he felt nothing. 

He broke the kiss quickly, placing both hands by her shoulders and saying, "This isn't right."

She blinked at him and said, "Why the hell not? You had no qualms about seducing me before." 

He frowned and said slowly, "Because… you don't love me. I know you don't." She smirked (he was seeing himself in her more and more and it scared him) and said, "Wasn't it you who told me 'what's that got to do with it?'" 

He couldn't deny that logic.

She tugged him in for another kiss, harsher this time. He returned the kiss and as he gave an inch, she took a mile. 

\---

Their first few encounters were strained and almost cold, purely filling the emptiness she felt with something resembling companionship. He accommodated her in every way he could because he couldn't imagine losing her after all this. 

He kissed her, he held her, she made it so he could feel what she needed and he always did his best. She always left right after, never lingering in his arms for long. He supposed it was best for her, but each time, he found himself wishing she would stay.

He wished he could tell her, but he knew she would hate him for it. Sometimes he felt her probing, and it was all he could do to keep her out. 

Being with her felt like ecstasy, but when he remembered how it came to be, the scarce bits of positivity vanished and left behind a hollow sort of sadness. Now that he could have her, every part of him begged for her, but deep down he knew that she didn't want him the same way. He knew he was a distraction, but he could never refuse her. 

Slowly, their encounters grew warmer, and their walls began to fall. She let him hold her for longer afterwards, staring listlessly at the void as he made it his task to cover her body in gentle kisses. He tried his best to show her what he couldn't say, with soft caresses and eagerness. He tried not to say anything at all, in fears that she'd remember herself and who she was with, or simply that he would mess up. If he did let something slip, it was always her name, gasped or sighed or moaned. 

He was careful to keep it that way over the course of the next million years, but she always made it difficult. "Q" never sounded better than when she said it. Her touches were like lightning, when she decided to touch him at all. She was art and music (melancholy as it may be) and beauty and strength, all in one. The small bit of sensation she allowed herself to feel shone from her like sunlight, and he basked in it. 

It was only when she came to him and kissed him slowly, cradling his face in her hands and filling the space around them with the soft glow of contentment, that he finally let it slip. He had broken the kiss and let his mouth wander along her jawline when he caught himself muttering against her skin, "You'll be my undoing, Kathy-"

If she thought anything he said was odd, she didn't betray it besides the slightest of pauses before she tilted her head back. He laid a heavy kiss over her pulse(?) and given her silence, he thought nothing of it. 

Moments later, with her legs draped over his shoulders and her hands buried in his hair, she grew curious and probed for his feelings. She was taken aback by the adoration that filled his actions, so much so that she overlooked the remorse and the guilt. It wasn't long before she ignored the physical feelings entirely and probed deeper, reading his thoughts and even living through them like a holonovel. 

She didn't know what she expected, but she certainly hadn't expected to hear 'I love you' in so many ways. She saw all the times they'd been together, even some instances before she was Q, only he thought of telling her every time. She dug even deeper and felt it for herself, and it was genuine, although it was twisted and confused from an eternity of not feeling anything at all. 

She withdrew from his thoughts like something had burned her, shoving him away with wide eyes. A split second of confusion flashed across his face before he realized what she did, but she didn’t stay long enough for him to call after her. 

She didn’t find him again for a couple million years, and for once, he felt every miserable second of it. 

\---

Kathryn had forgotten just how much change could happen in a million years, and when she went back to exploring, she found that almost everything was different. The human race had gone extinct. She was surprised to find that she didn’t want to look back and see what had happened. 

She left the Milky Way and rediscovered some of the worlds she had lived on, seeing the races she’d befriended had evolved or gone extinct. She simply befriended the new ones. 

She hated how much of Q she heard in her own voice, so for a couple hundred years she hid in the Continuum, playing the role of the scarecrow, the truck, even the road and the sun that burned in the sky without end. Now more than ever, she could understand why Quinn had wanted to die. She couldn’t fathom how one could spend eternity like this; she hardly even felt pain anymore. The only thing that came close was the dull ache left behind whenever she remembered her crew, and even that was slipping away. She went back out into the universe and found another species to aide, trying desperately to find some small fragment of purpose again. 

Whenever she didn’t quite feel like showing herself for a millennium or two, she spent the time conjuring stars and scattering nebulas through space, creating beautiful sights but never life. She crafted entire galaxies, star by star, watching them turn in the void before holding them in her hands and vanishing them with a thought. 

When she finally showed herself, she was always benevolent, refusing to toy with lower lifeforms like the other Q had done. She solved some of their problems but never allowed herself to get attached. 

She filled entire corners of the universe with wondrous stars and anomalies, braiding the fabric of space and undoing it just to do it all again. Time slipped by with her hardly noticing the centuries, but at the same time she felt every minute pass with agonizing clarity. Time was also beginning to be a bit of a nuisance, so she spent another million years mastering it. 

She explored every aspect of existence itself, down to the most minute detail, until one day(?) she realized there was nothing left to explore. She wandered around in denial, thinking that surely there must be something left, but over the course of another century her fears were confirmed. She'd mastered it all.

For a couple dozen years, she even tried to kill herself. She knew that if a veteran Q like Quinn couldn't manage it, then she couldn't possibly hope to, but now all she had was time so she reasoned that it couldn't hurt to try. 

She hurled herself into a blackhole only to come out completely unscathed. She teleported into the center of a supernova, turned into a microbe and found some antimatter to smack around, and even provoked a species calling themselves the God-Killers. Nothing did the slightest bit of harm (not even the God-Killers, but there was no real surprise there.) 

She gave up after trying everything she could, spending a century floating aimlessly between galaxies. She would have felt hopeless if she could feel anything at all. 

\---

She found Q in the Continuum, sitting on the steps to the front porch and staring out at the road. He had foregone his usual Starfleet uniform, dressed instead in a drab tan suit with a green tie. It took her a little by surprise, seeing him fit into a landscape rather than defy it. It was almost sad.

She stepped closer and said with a bit of the smirk (that she couldn't muster the hatred for), "I've got to admit, the uniform wasn't half bad, but green makes you almost look dashing." He looked up at her before she sat down next to him, and said with a hint of a smile in his eyes, "Who are you and what have you done with my beloved Kathy?" 

A small smile spread across her face. She hated to admit it, but she'd missed talking to someone who didn't revere her as a god. It made her feel almost human again, and as that thought occurred to her, her smile faded. 

"Did you mean it, Q?" 

His smile dimmed, and he looked back out at the road as he answered, "Wasn't it you who observed that I might be a lot of things, but I'm no liar?" They sat in silence for a minute (or an hour or a decade, time was slippery in the Continuum) before he said with a dreadful lack of theatrics, "I meant it. I still mean it, as much as it pains me to admit."

She rested her elbows on her knees and said, "I don't know if I love you. I don't even know if I still can." He nodded slowly and began to say something but she interjected, holding up a finger and saying, "I'm not finished." He nodded again and let her continue.

"But being with you… is truly the closest thing to normal anymore." She chuckled a bit at her own statement and said, "Imagine, calling anything to do with you 'normal'. I never thought I'd live to see the day."

She paused for a second(?), staring at the road and counting the molecules in the space in front of her before saying, "I might not love you… but I'll be damned if I lose the only person I can be around anymore." 

A small smile snuck its way onto his face and he said, “I can definitely live with that, for now.” If she could feel the minute bit of melancholy in his voice, she didn’t show it. She simply smirked and said, “Don’t test your luck.”

\---

Kathryn was different. 

Q knew it would have been foolish to expect nothing to change. It was only natural, after all, for a person who had been so unceremoniously gifted (ha) omnipotence. But she reminded him more and more of himself, and for the first time, he could almost understand why humans had found him so frustrating. 

She was infinitely more nihilistic than she'd ever been, smothering the emptiness under sarcasm and searing kisses. The Indiana lilt never truly left her voice, but her whispered promises and wagers were refined with a silver tongue that easily rivalled his. 

She grew bored more and more easily, sometimes spending millions of years at a time in the Continuum just to see what changes would await her once she left. This game quickly grew tiring, however, because with omnipotence she found that she already knew, even before she looked. She'd look anyway, occasionally making herself known to the civilizations that arose there. Despite Q's urging that it would be infinitely more fun, she refused to lord over them, still clinging to the last shreds of her humanity. He loved her for it. 

She had always been the perpetual ice queen but where before there was warmth behind her eyes, there was nothing but a reflection of time and space. She braided starlight into the copper hair of her corporeal form, soared through the void as if it had always been her home, but there was an odd detachment in everything she did. 

She gave herself the duty of protecting life (although Q argued that life was insignificant), and earned the gratitude of so many systems. It wasn't long before he joined her in her visits, causing his usual amount of mischief and getting a rise out of her. She was careful to make sure these encounters never turned into a tug of war where there might be collateral damage, but Q seemed intent on pushing her buttons. 

Q had experience, countless lifetimes more than Kathryn did, but if he was an unstoppable force, she was an immovable object. However, their squabbles never went past playful banter and the occasional flung anomaly, and in the end, he always stole a kiss. 

But there was always something off. When he held her, she felt almost hollow. Her thoughts and feelings were tainted by her ever-present grief, and no matter what she said when they were alone, he knew that if she had the choice, she would have died along with her crew. He could see it in the way she watched life down on the planets: she envied them. She envied mortality.

He told her he loved her almost every day (second? century?) and while she had begun to say it back, whether it be muttered against his cheek or thought to him as they watched the galaxies turn, he couldn't believe her. She felt nothing for him outside something resembling friendship, and it was beyond his extensive powers of imagination to think otherwise. 

He supposed that he should have felt lucky to earn her friendship in the first place, but along with the desperate selfish part of him that always wanted more, another part mourned with her. 

Occasionally she still asked him to hold her, and of course he could never refuse her anything, but he couldn't help but think that he never wanted it to happen like this.

He always thought that one day he'd arrive back on Voyager, possibly after she'd found a way home despite the crushing odds, and after some witty banter he'd ask her to dinner. Or maybe she'd ask him for help with some dilemma (unlikely) or she'd just want to talk (even more unlikely). 

As much as he jested, as much as he'd flung Starfleet ships into the furthest reaches of what they knew, he'd quite forgotten how oddly fragile humanity was. 

They stood in the void, watching the galaxies Kathryn had conjured. Q absent-mindedly wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into his touch and relaxed with a ghost of a sigh. Her melancholy washed over him and he didn't fight it.


End file.
